The Anniversary
by PTBvisiongrrl
Summary: It's a day that Kara alone dreads.


TITLE: The Anniversary

Author- PTBvisiongrrl

Part- 1/1

Date- 05/13/07

Rating - PG

Pairings/Characters- Kara/Zak, references to Kara/Lee

Word Count- 997

Category- ficlet

Genre- Romance, Angst

Archiving- The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, all other's please ask.

Warnings- a bit maudlin, mild cussing

Spoilers- through first half of Season 3

It was never an easy day for Kara. She tried to keep as busy as possible, tried not to see the date on the calendar, tried not to think of where her life should have been by now. She thought that the end of the world would ease her ache, make her one loss small in comparison to the loss of almost an entire civilization, but it didn't. If anything, the lack of joy and happiness around her only made it worse.

And that was why she had found herself with a jar of the Chief's brew in the shuttered observation lounge after getting off of a double CAP. Damaged in an attack, with no tactical use to speak of, the room had been left as-is once environmental seals had been re-established. No one would bother her here; she could drink herself senseless, sleep it off, and manage to avoid Tigh or the brig. She deliberately did not seek out the two other officers on board who might have noted the date. She wasn't even sure if either of the Adama men had an inkling what today should have been for her.

Ever since New Caprica, things simply had not been the same with the Admiral. Even once she had cleaned up her act and starting acted like a Colonial officer again, the Old Man had largely kept his distance, and she had no way to bridge that gap. The one time that she had tried to approach him at his quarters, he had been in conference with the President; rebuffed, she hadn't had the courage to try again. And Lee- well, Lee was-

Off limits, of his own accord.

Settling herself down carefully on a smudged and torn seat cushion, Kara plugged the music cartridge into her player and let the sounds of what would have been her and Zak's wedding song wash over her. Twisting Zak's ring around and around her thumb, Kara contemplated what it would have been like, to have been married and settled and—happy. What would the day have been like? Not rushed, like her marriage to Sam, an attempt to run away from someone. A real marriage, a choice to spend her life with someone else, to build a future together, to bend to someone else's wishes on occasion.

When she and Zak had actually discussed what their wedding would be like, she had discovered that the day itself, the ceremony, was much more important to her than she had thought. Zak was all for eloping; to him, the ceremony was no more than a legality to formalize what he and Kara already felt. Necessary, but not worth a lot of planning and money. It was she who had fought for a large gathering of friends and family. His family, obviously, not hers. Small details loomed large in her view of the event, the complete opposite from her usual, by-the-seat-of-her-pants approach. She had wanted to walk into the chapel to one of her father's lighter compositions, unescorted. She had planned to go all out and even wear a dress in the traditional white.

It would have been three years now, three years a wife. Would Zak have finally convinced her that children were a good idea? Would they still be in the Fleet?

Would she have cheated on Zak like she had on Sam? Would she have ripped Zak's heart out as thoughtlessly as she had Lee's? Would she have managed to reign in her self-destructive skill at frakkin' everything up?

She would never know, and that was what hurt the most. Zak had always made her feel like she was someone different from the infamous Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, someone gentler, more loving, less unstable. No one else had ever had that effect on her. If Zak had not died, who would she have been today, instead of what she, disappointingly, was?

Mouthing the vows of a traditional Caprican wedding under her breath, Kara cracked the seal on Tyrol's rotgut. The music player had switched songs, and she reached back to loop it on their wedding song. It was the one less traditional thing she had wanted about the wedding; it was a rough and ragged beat, loud and hard. It was the song that had played in the background at the bar the night she and Zak had gone out on their first real date. The lyrics were less than stellar poetry, but it was never the words that had made this song special. It was the rhythm pounding in her veins and she and Zak had danced that night and she knew, she knew-

Zak was the one.

Despite what she knew some people thought these days, she had never given Lee a second glance back then. She had barely known him, other than a few friendly dinners with Kara, Zak, Lee, and Lee's latest girlfriend. Every time, it had been a different girl, and not one had anything in common with Kara Thrace. Each experience was long and painful for all involved. It was only after Zak was gone that she had gotten to know Lee at all. If Zak was still around, Starbuck and Apollo would never have crossed the uncrossable lines they had obliterated together under the Caprican moon.

Of course, if Zak had survived, it was more than possible that they both would have died in the attack on the colonies, a fact that she always came back to in the end. Her dead fiance represented more than the love she had lost; it was also the worlds that were obliterated, and the lack of options she now had.

Fatigued to the bone, her soul as dark as ever, Kara contemplated the field of stars visible though the cracked windows of her hiding spot, raising her liquid remedy high in a poor imitation of a toast before taking a deep pull and settling back for what she knew would be a long, lonely night.


End file.
